Youth Home Wins Few Converts At Township Meeting

The operators of a Bedminster Township youth home spent more than 90 minutes last night trying to convince township supervisors and residents that their clients pose no danger to the community.

They didn't get very far.

"I want the thing out of there," said Helen Dunham of Sweet Briar Road, whose home was robbed Jan. 1 by two Levittown teens who had escaped from the facility hours earlier. "I don't want a kid coming to my door again with a knife on his person. I have not felt free since Jan. 1 and I want it out."

The crowd of about 60 people -- the largest to attend a supervisors meeting in about eight years, according to one supervisor -- made it clear they were unwilling to accept explanations offered by officials from Youth Services of Bucks County, which has operated the Elephant Road home since 1991.

The home, which is located inside Nockamixon State Park, also provides a climbing course and adventure programs for troubled teens from Bucks County.

Executive Director Roger Dawson said afterward that he understood the resistance but believed his staff had overcome the problems that have plagued the facility over the past year or so.

"No one wants a juvenile group home near them, but they are needed," Dawson said. "This group tried to focus on every negative thing that has happened, and some of them are legitimate concerns."

Dawson said the agency has increased the number of staffers at the home and changed residency requirements to provide more control over the type of youths housed there. The group is also seeking township zoning approval to build an addition that will allow better supervision, he said.

The information session was scheduled after several residents approached township supervisors last month, expressing fears about the lack of supervision and security at the home. The boys who robbed Dunham's home were arrested less than an hour later, but not before they tried to break into another home on the same road, township police said at the time.

Supervisors Chairman A. Warren Kulp Jr. read a list of more than a dozen incidents at the home that required police intervention over the last two years. Those incidents included numerous runaways, a fight, one person who swallowed fire extinguisher powder, and the arrest of a counselor who supplied teens with alcohol.

Kulp said the supervisors will consider creating a neighborhood board to work with Youth Services officials to create better relations with the community, but many residents said they weren't convinced.